Gift cards are big business with more than $160 billion in gift cards purchased by 2018. While some people think that gift cards are an easy way out, they are the most requested gift on most people’s wish lists.

Personally, I love giving and getting gift cards. I think of gift cards as giving someone the possibilities to select something they really want: a thoughtful contribution towards a major gift or the chance to browse online or through paper catalogues at their leisure to pick something out. In any event, knowing a little more about gift cards and the rules surrounding them is a good thing for givers and receivers alike.

Over the past few months, I’ve noticed a lot of consumers at large and small stores not quite certain how to use their chipped and non-chipped cards. The cashiers and clerks don’t always have the reasons explained to them behind their processes so the confusion about the new cards, old cards, new machines and old machines is rampant. Let’s see if we can clear the air a bit.

The United States converted to chipped credit and debit cards over five months ago but some merchants aren’t with the program yet. Big box stores are already handling chipped credit/debit cards smoothly while a legion of smaller merchants still use the swipe stripe on the back of all cards, whether they have a chip or not.

The conversion to chipped credit/debit cards started Oct 1, 2015 with voluntary compliance by merchants, except for automated fuel dispensers (gas stations). The mandatory deadline for conversion to all chipped card acceptance including gas stations is Oct 1, 2017. Between now and 10/1/17, as a consumer, you’ll deal with a mixture of credit/debit card acceptance processes, depending on the stores you frequent.

Selling to a new customer is a lot like playing in the Super Bowl. You can bet that Peyton Manning (along with the entire Bronco’s team) spent a great deal of time understanding their playbooks and visualizing how they would each participate in the game. No doubt, Cam Newton and the Panthers did the same. The difference is that the Broncos navigated and controlled both the opening of the game and the outcome successfully.

Start Strong

The beginning and end of a selling situation are the strongest places for you to make an impact and create the result you seek. If you start strong but end weakly (or worse, never ask for the sale), the game is lost. In between, you must navigate and control every aspect of the sale, whether that occurs in a single appointment or over several months of contact and meetings.

This intervening time can be tough because you control only your side of the process: your customer can surprise you with plays and feints you weren’t expecting. That’s why you go in knowing what objections you’re likely to encounter and have excellent responses at the ready. You also research the customer’s past and current operations as thoroughly as possible as you start working with them so you are ready for unexpected reorganizations, budget cuts or staff changes.

Let’s see a show of hands: who is still working toward their goals for 2016? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller? How about your New Year’s resolutions, which are really goals by another name? Just crickets.

If you haven’t been able to stay with your goals, get some help. There are plenty of professionals available to help you with whatever you want to accomplish: stop smoking? – find a coach. Take off weight? Find a fitness coach or a gym to help you. Want to get better organized? There are consultants to help with that. Even among your friends and acquaintances, there are likely to be people who are knowledgeable and would help without charging you.

There’s no shame in needing some tips from someone who is skilled in what you want to accomplish. In fact, so many people fail because they don’t (usually won’t) get some motivation and help from somebody who has been there before. It isn’t a sign of weakness to seek help, it’s really the most mature approach.

I have had the pleasure of working recently with Kyle Bolster of Rochester ATM. We were talking about how installing an ATM in retail businesses can help increase sales for the store. Here are the highlights of our conversation:

Can I increase my customer traffic with an ATM?

With an ATM installed in your business, customers no longer need to stop at a competitor’s establishment to get cash and spend it there. Rather, customers come directly to your place of business because you can satisfy their cash needs.

Since October 1, 2015, when you go into a store, sometimes you slide your credit card and sometimes you insert the card (called card dipping) and key in your Personal Identification Number (PIN) to process payment. Why the difference? All banks and financial institutions are slowly replacing all the credit and debit cards in your wallet with cards that have computer chips embedded in them. All credit card readers in retail locations (gas stations exempted) had to be able to read the chips by October 1, 2015.

So, 2015 is just about in the rear view mirror. Rather than spend the next week or so patting yourself on the back – or grousing about a down year – sit down for an hour or so of honest reflection and get a plan formulated for next year’s goals and how you will get there

Don’t wait until January 1st to do this – do it now so you can hit the ground running on the first day of the business year. The key to this is the honest reflection part. Treat this as a private performance review that you’re giving yourself. Whatever you did or didn’t do this past year is ultimately yours to own, not your manager or your colleagues or your competition.

Own your successes and failures briefly to make sure you learned the lesson they brought you. Then turn your attention completely to the future. What’s done is done. What’s next? Are you going to repeat the cycle again in 2016 or are you going to make positive changes so the outcome next year is better? If you don’t consciously break a cycle, you will never get different results.

As the 2015 holiday season approaches, I attended the play Miracle on 34th Street at the Kodak Theatre on the Ridge over Thanksgiving weekend and was reminded what a great sales philosophy the story imparts. The part I’m talking about is when Macy’s doesn’t have a toy the customer requests, Kris Kringle sends the customer – and others – to Gimbels, Macy’s chief competitor. The customer is so impressed with the customer service provided by Macy’s Santa Claus that she tells the toy department manager that she will be their customer for life.

So Macy’s continues the policy of referring customers to competitors and soon Gimbels is forced to do the same to avoid looking greedy and self-serving. This escalates to the point that all retailers are referring to each other and all are profiting from the practice.

Starting in Europe in the Sixteenth Century, paper currency supplanted direct barter as a way to transfer and pay for agricultural commodities, such as tobacco, grains, wool and spirits. The grower or seller took his crop to the local depot and in return, the depot keeper gave a paper bearer demand note to the grower, which could then be traded with other merchants for needed goods and services.

While the systems are far more sophisticated now and the exchange of money for goods is most often electronic rather than done with a paper bearer demand note, the system remains just about the same under the hood.

What makes payment processing more complicated in the 21st Century are the numerous regulatory requirements that must be followed scrupulously. Therefore, the contemporary payment processor typically works with its merchants using cloud-based software-as-a-service (SaaS). This provides the merchant a simple electronic portal (guaranteed to be always regulatory-compliant) that allows them to do everything they need to do to take credit cards, cash transactions, make remittances and web-originated payments. The benefit to the merchant is faster transaction processing, more reliable quality and cheaper per-transaction fees.

The EMV (the acronym stands for Europay, MasterCard and Visa but refers to chip-equipped credit cards) conversion deadline has passed. All merchants, except for gas stations, now must accept EMV cards, effective October 1, 2015. Gas and alternative vehicle fuel merchants are exempted from the new EMV mandate until 2017.

There are pros and cons to the new EMV technology, which obsoletes swipe (magnetic stripe) credit and debit cards. It also obsoletes the familiar swipe card readers found at every retailer and ATM in the United States. Industry experts figure it will take three or four years for all swipe-access ATMs and retail terminals to be retired in favor of EMV systems.

Most of the world, including Canada, the European Union countries, India, Brazil and Japan, have already converted to EMV, starting in 1994 The push to implement EMV in the United States is to eliminate counterfeit credit cards and stolen PIN numbers that give thieves free access to individual’s credit card accounts.

Stephen Dewhurst: is the chair of microbiology and immunology at the University of Rochester Medical Center, where he directs a research lab that studies HIV. He also directs URMC's new Stem Cell GMP (bio-manufacturing) Facility and is president of a biotech startup company, Codevax. Dewhurst has a strong commitment to student mentoring and diversity in the biomedical workforce, as well as to the Rochester community, having lived here for more than two decades.

Sitima Fowler: is the CEO of CAPSTONE Information Technologies, founder of RochesterRockstars.com and co-author of Computers Should Just Work! Fowler shares of advice about growing a company despite tough economic times, among other things.

Michael Krause is the president and founder of Sales Sense Payments Inc., a national credit card processor based in Rochester, NY. Sales Sense Payments believes in simplicity, honesty, value and keeping merchants’ credit card processing fees as low as possible. Krause also wrote SMART Prospecting That Works Every Time! (McGraw Hill) and Sell or Sink: Strategies, Tactics and Tools Every Business Leader Must Know to Stay Afloat!

Eric Loyd: is the founder and CEO of SmartVox. Passionate about Rochester's small business community, he is a graduate of the TEN program, a two-time GREAT Awards finalist, a local and national speaker, mentor for Digital Rochester, and privileged to be part of High Tech Rochester’s technology incubator. Follow on Twitter at @EricLoyd, @Bitnetix, or @SmartVox.

Angella Luyk: is CEO of Midnight Janitorial Inc., was the recipient of the 2009 (National) American Business and 2008 Rochester Business ethics awards. She has grown her business in six years from startup to a million dollar business. In her first book, Wisdom in a Traffic Jam, she reveals all the secrets no one tells you about owning an amazingly successful business. Angella writes the way she speaks, with a fun, energetic, easy to understand style.

Luis Martínez: has been a trusted coach and business adviser for many years. His strategic management consulting firm, Gran Altura Inc., offers his leadership development experience to organizations and executives. Luis directed the global human resources department for worldwide manufacturing at Xerox, was senior vice president of human resources at Lehigh Valley Hospital, and served as vice president and general manager of Exide Batteries in Puerto Rico. Born and raised in Cuba, Luis has authored two books, Getting There and Getting There Volume 2.

Siwei Dodge: came to the United States from China a few years ago. She earned a master's degree in finance at Rochester Institute of Technology and started a business with a couple of friends. "I was told 'build your business, then it’ll come together.' Well, my first business sank. Oops. I see “advice” like this all the time—“you just need to get yourself out there” and “just follow your passion”—I realized most of it made no sense. That’s when I decided to learn how business really works. On one hand, I am interviewing top CEOs and successful entrepreneurs and putting everything I’ve learned in a book. On the other hand, I am testing my ideas to find out what works -- or not." Contact her at siweidodge@gmail.com or siweidodge.com.